On Saturday, I managed to survive what would hopefully be the last visit to Milton Keynes shopping centre this Christmas. Carol and I hit the place at 8:30 AM before the manic crowds turned up. The one part of it I was looking forward to was buying some Spanish Cava  for the celebrations. Having grabbed a half-dozen case nad waited in line for a check out, they almost seemed to be giving it away. I knew there was 20% off special for the weekend but I ended up getting 50% off. The receipt showed not only the 20% special but a 10% case discount and 20% on their original two bottles discount. Surely that couldn’t be right? What a deal! This was not an opportunity to miss so it was back round again and into line for a second case. 🙂

Waving good bye to the growing mass of humanity, we got our booty home safely and decided we still had time for our yearly ritual of getting a Christmas tree. We’re lucky enough to be able to walk through some woods at the rear of our house to collect it on foot; it’s only a distance of a few hundred yards. The selection of trees was not terrific this year but we finally chose one and seemed to get a deal on that, too. Walking back through the woods with an 8ft tree over your shoulder is tough but the ritual is mostly fun. It was even a simpler job than usual getting it fixed safely in its stand.

The evening was spent enjoying a splendid curry lovingly prepared by friends Stuart and Pamela. We returned home relatively early, though, since we were to zoom off to Stansted the following morning for Keith and Marlene’s home-coming.

A rude 5:45 AM alarm on Friday roused Carol from beneath the warmth of the downie and made the author stir, albeit briefly. Apparently, Carol and Rosemary left at 6:30 AM for the joyous drive (not!) to Luton airport. Actually, the airport is the best thing about Luton ‘cos it helps you leave it far behind, which is undoubtedly the best thing to do with it. I did not hear them leave. The next thing I knew was the front door opening and Carol returning to reheat my tea in the microwave. See, they do have a constructive use. This is a good trip because it completes the full set of “London” airports for us, Keith and Marlene having been remiss enough not to make any travel arrangements involving Luton. (Maybe they knew?)

After that, Carol has a two hour hair appointment – well, it is very curly – so I have a golden opportunity to do some Christmas wrapping. That goes quite well, I’ve actually managed to fill Carol’s unfeasibly large Christmas stocking, and Christmas gets a step closer.

… but “Chilli with Rosemary”, to plagiarize that well-known title. Friends Rosemary and Steve had organized a weekend in Edinburgh but, as luck would have it, Steve wound up working in Edinburgh the week before. Better than not working, I suppose. (Actually, no, it’s not – ed.) Two tickets paid for; one traveller as Rosemary would be winging her way up to Edinburgh from Luton airport to join Steve. However, Rosemary is unfamiliar with Luton’s facilities so we plan a Thursday evening dinner date together so that Rosemary can stay over and Carol can ferry her to Luton airport in the AM.

The cold weather and mid-week date is a perfect excuse for a good old Chilli con Carne revival. I fancy a bit of variation however, so we go black substituting black turtle beans for the usual red kidney beans, pork for beef and throw the whole over some Nanjing Black Rice. It’s a good variation – even the normally abstemious ladies have multiple helpings – and this could become my standard chilli. Of course, it always helps when everything is washed down with some decent vino but, with those chillies, it’s best not to go overboard on quality.

Poor Carol had a Tuesday appointment with the dentist to get an expensive new crown fitted. Funny how one’s teeth wait until retirement to start playing up, isn’t it? She took advantage of a bright, sunny morning and bravely walked into town to keep her appointment while I bravely struck out for Milton Keynes (yet again) to continue my Christmas shopping. Upon my return all was well and, apart from a residual ache from having her jaw mauled about and generally messed with, Carol was fine and had emerged sporting a shiny new crown.

The sun continued and, since there may not be many such days at this time of year, I thought I should make the best use of it by doing a nasty external chore. Yes, it’s all caused by that darned oak tree again; the gutters needed clearing as did the conservatory roof. We like to put our Christmas tree in the conservatory so that the Christmas lights reflect in the glass walls and roof. The effect is somewhat spoiled if the roof is covered in moss and decaying oak leaves. So, it was out with the ladder and up to the gutters armed with a bucket. Bright the weather may have been but it was also very nearly freezing; there was still some ice in the water. What an enjoyable job – not! After an hour or two it was done and the conservatory now looks like a suitable home for the Christmas tree but, Lord, did my fingers ache. Maybe they were displaying solidarity with Carol’s jaw.

After a morning playing Santa Claus, Carol and I decided to get some much needed exercise clearing what is hopefully the final dump of leaves this year from the nearby oak tree. It hangs over our house like the sword of Damocles and is our biggest single source of outside maintenance. Vast amounts of very cold, very wet leaves that, having stopped clinging tenaciously to the branches, now cling tenaciously to our path, patio and lawn. It’s a little early this year, normally waiting until the week before Christmas to shed its last leaves. The back-breaking task was finally finished by about 3:00 PM and one car load, all but two sacks, of leaf litter has been taken to the Household Waste Recycling Centre by the good little citizens that we are. It is so tempting just to tip the leaves into the woods beyond our property line but, so far, we haven’t weakened. That would reduce our carbon footprint, though, wouldn’t it? Hmmm.

At least now we can see the patio again and we stand a chance of barbecuing the goose on Christmas Day. I cannot believe that Keith and Marlene travelled over here with two bags of wonderful Kingsford charcoal briquettes (if only they were available in this country) in addition to five weeks worth of luggage. With such devotion above and beyond the call of duty, I’m honour bound to barbecue the bird, even if it pours with rain on 25th December. If the current weather pattern is indicative, it probably will.

On Sunday morning I used Google Earth to correct and expand my scant geographical knowledge. Our education began just before Keith and Marlene left. We knew their trip began in Vienna, ended in Prague, and went along the Danube but, wait a moment – Prague is on the Moldau (a.k.a. Vltava as in Má Vlast by Bedřich Smetana), isn’t it? Yes; they apparently float west up the Danube from Vienna to Nuremberg, then get bussed back east to Prague. I thought Prague would be east of Vienna whereas it’s north. I think I’d been confusing Prague and Budapest. Doh! Now I’d got that straight, we did their trip, albeit in reverse, on Google Earth and the clarity, detail and colours are quite staggering; boats, locks, weirs, marinas all crystal clear. The “beautiful blue Danube” actually does look blue. I must show them when they return.

However, Sunday soon descended into the dismally wet pattern established by Saturday, so we took the opportunity to do some PC maintenance. Having been given a wake-up call by Carol’s lap top crash on Friday, I made fresh back ups of all the data on my desk top PC. It’d been over a year since I did it (spot the former computer professional). Meanwhile, Carol used her recovery disk to restore and rebuild her lap top. We really had no idea what caused the cataclysmic crash (it wouldn’t boot as a result) and were a bit concerned that their might be an underlying hardware failure but eventually it staggered back into life and so far so good – I’m writing this on it now.

Well, what else are you going to do on a wet Sunday?

Keith and Marlene’s tour of London airports was to continue on Saturday morning with an 8:00 AM trip to Heathrow to begin their Danube cruise from Vienna. At 7:00 AM the house was a little more subdued than normal as the wisdom was questioned of the previous evening’s an attack on the European wine lake. The carnage in the kitchen revealed that the vanguard French Picpoul de Pinet troops suffered almost debilitating casualties (4) with losses also to the Italian Pinot Grigio (1), Spanish Cava (1) and related Chilean Carmenere (1) divisions. One officer of the Port battalion was critically but not fatally wounded and stretchered from the field of battle.

After various medicinal doses of coffee, tea or, in Marlene’s case, straight Pepsi, the trip to Heathrow was blissfully uneventful and we arrived at Terminal 4 by about 9:00 AM for the 10:50 AM flight to Vienna. It had started raining on the way down and that was set to continue and increase in intensity as the day progressed. I hoped the weather in Vienna would be better but the forecast didn’t look good.

While Carol was out Christmas shopping with her sister, the rest of the day was spent inside sheltering from the rain and investigating what appeared to be a fatal condition which befell Carol’s lap top PC the previous day (a missing “hal.dll” file that stops booting dead in its tracks). We suspected that a re-install would be necessary and hoped that a damaged hard drive was not the cause of the problem.

The house feels strangely empty.

Our neighbours, Paul and Liz, are currently in upheaval refitting their kitchen. So, Paul had readily accepted Carol’s invitation to dinner with us on Friday evening. That meant that almost all of Friday would be spent buying and preparing for the meal. I dragged Keith to Morrisons supermarket to see what luck I would have at their fish counter while Carol took the opportunity to start baking her second Christmas cake. There was a good selection of shellfish and the monkfish tails looked good, too – small but good. So, we settled on the following menu:

• Seafood risotto (with prawns, mussels, scallops and langoustines)
• Monkfish with pink peppercorn sauce
• Mince pies and ice cream
• Cheese board

As I made the seafood and monkfish stocks, Keith appeared and declared that the fish aromas didn’t go particularly well with the smell of the Christmas cake, which was still baking. He was, of course, quite right. There are times when I wish we had an extractor hood.

After all the preparation, we managed a swift trip over to Woburn to see its Christmas lights (which are a quite vivid blue) before Paul and Liz arrived armed with suitable ice-breaking liquids. These were very welcome but unnecessary as no ice needed to be broken – they instantly got on very well with Keith and Marlene. I think a good time was had by all and we finally managed to retire in preparation for the morning’s drive to Heathrow for Keith and Marlene’s flight to Vienna to begin their 8-day Danube cruise.

When we invaded Keith and Marlene’s families in Virginia last year for Thanksgiving, Keith seemed particularly keen on Carol’s rich fruit cake. It was actually a Christmas cake, of course, but it seemed appropriate for any celebration feast. In honour of this year’s return match, Carol decided to make two similar cakes, one to keep Keith happy before Christmas and one for Christmas itself, and had begun steeping the fruit just prior to the Gatwick Express. Thursday was time to bake the first cake.

Making the cake is a four hour process so, while Keith and Marlene slept on after their being route-marched around London, Carol got to work. As folks eventually began to face the day with tea, coffee, breakfast, tea and coffee, the kitchen began to smell as if Christmas may be just around the corner.

I was left guarding the still baking cake, lest it try to escape from the oven, while the others went on a brief local shopping trip to Leighton Buzzard. After the cake was pronounced finished and removed from the oven, it was time to return to the delights of Milton Keynes to collect a pair of new bar stools that would enable us all to sit while gathered in the kitchen. It was also a good opportunity to see the Christmas decorations in the shopping arcade which, each year, has a themed set of scenes and illuminations. This year the theme is Wind in the Willows, though it seems a little more sparse than previous years. Photographically, Carol was particularly taken with a splendid illuminated carousel.

Everyone was freed from further cooking duty in the evening as we were off to get another of Keith’s favourites, real English fish and chips traditionally cooked by Orientals.

Thursday was a dreadful morning on the weather front but we went ahead with our planned trip into London. The previous day, Carol had spotted an attractive “four for two” deal on travel cards (which include the otherwise-outrageously-priced Underground: £4 a journey, indeed).

After a leisurely breakfast we headed for the station to catch the 9:25 AM where I dropped the passengers off to buy the tickets while I parked the car. “£5.50 please”, quoth the lady at barrier. “Can I plastic it?”, I enquired. “No, we don’t have that facility”, she responded. “What, for £5.50; you’re kidding”, I retorted, digging out my last tenner. Handing me the change, she now says, “go and try to get parked and, if there isn’t a place, come back and I’ll give you a refund; we’re getting full”. Strewth! Fortunately I manage to find a spot albeit surrounded by a sea of mud and water. If we seriously want people to stop driving, why on Earth don’t we supply enough decent car parking at the stations, especially for £5.50?

Meanwhile, Carol has the value Travel Cards, the train arrives on time and we get to Euston in 45 minutes and reasonable comfort (i.e. seated, since the main commute has finished). On to the Underground where the girls plan to visit Harrods while the boys go a stop further to see my favourite old boyhood attraction, the Science Museum. After about 90 minutes, I can’t help but think that it’s a pale shadow of its former self. Inside, the building now looks very modern and I couldn’t find the many “animated” display cases that I remembered being so much fun. “Inside the Spitfire”, which I was quite looking forward to, is simply a dissected Spitfire, looking like a large Airfix kit, and is so superficial as to seem pointless. I suspect anyone who has actually assembled the Airfix kit would already know more than this display tells them. I recall fondly the wonderful enormous pendulum that used to scribe the Earth’s rotation in a tray of sand but that no longer seems to exist, either. Now, the museum appears to contain mostly cafes, simulator rides and Imax cinema. Keith did find Stevenson’s Rocket to sate his train craving, though.

After that we had a quick 30 minutes in the adjoining Natural History Museum to see the dino bones in the mercifully still wonderful Central Hall, the architecture of which is stunning and still looks so. Then it was off up Brompton Road to meet the Harroding ladies for lunch in a pub. We were then encouraged into Harrods ourselves, I think mainly to see the Princess Di and Dodi memorial. However, a somewhat bizarre display of yarn fashioned into a flowing gown in the knitting department appeared a tad more interesting.

Back to the underground and up to Covent Garden, another of my favourite London haunts, largely because the street entertainers are so much fun. The legs were beginning to tire but a small purchase of some Thornton’s chocolate upped the blood sugar and gave us just about enough energy to divert to the recently revamped St. Pancras for another train enthusiast visit. It does look impressive on the inside and there was a Eurostar in port for Keith to see.

Finally, it was back to Euston for the 4:55 PM non-stop service to Leighton Buzzard where we salvaged the car from its muddy puddle to return for some long anticipated drinks and spaghetti Bolognese salvaged from our freezer.